they believe, "A potential global warming issue has been identified that should be treated as a potential problem for which root cause is not definitely known."
For this reason, they argue, the U.S. government is "over-reacting" to the concerns of the media, scientists and activists and that a more "rational process for allocation of research funds without the constant media hype of an AGW crisis is needed."

"The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought," said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" who estimates that moderate warming will be beneficial for crop growth and human health.

Some experts say their trust in climate science has declined because of the many uncertainties. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035.

"My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years," said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England.

Suck it you smug assholes who crow as if you know with certainty how the global climate functions. The models are horrendously flawed and always have been, a ton more research is needed before we even approach a clue.

There's been an immense amount of research in global warning and many credible scientists have determined that we have serious issues to address. While I'm sure we could do a bit more research and modeling, I think we're probably at the point where we can make policy decisions based on what we already know.

__________________
"I love signature blocks on the Internet. I get to put whatever the hell I want in quotes, pick a pretend author, and bang, it's like he really said it." George Washington

There's been an immense amount of research in global warning and many credible scientists have determined that we have serious issues to address. While I'm sure we could do a bit more research and modeling, I think we're probably at the point where we can make policy decisions based on what we already know.

I agree. Now that NASA has determined co2 actually cools the atmosphere we should be drilling every drop of oil we can and bring back the muscle cars of the 60's and 70's

I agree. Now that NASA has determined co2 actually cools the atmosphere we should be drilling every drop of oil we can and bring back the muscle cars of the 60's and 70's

The same "Blanket" effect that shields heat escaping, therefore increasing temperature lows average over 24 hour period at the floor of the atmosphere does restrict those wavelengths at the top of atmosphere restricting the highs in the ceiling of the atmospheric as you increase CO 2 total presence. The surprising thing is how much CO 2 is appearing at the top of the atmosphere.

__________________Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases. . . He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge." -H.L. Mencken

A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.

The Abstracts Survey
The first step of our approach involved expanding the original survey of the peer-reviewed scientific literature in Oreskes (2004). We performed a keyword search of peer-reviewed scientific journal publications (in the ISI Web of Science) for the terms 'global warming' and 'global climate change' between the years 1991 and 2011, which returned over 12,000 papers. John Cook created a web-based system that would randomly display a paper's abstract (summary). We agreed upon definitions of possible categories: explicit or implicit endorsement of human-caused global warming, no position, and implicit or explicit rejection (or minimization of the human influence).

Our approach was also similar to that taken by James Powell, as illustrated in the popular graphic below. Powell examined nearly 14,000 abstracts, searching for explicit rejections of human-caused global warming, finding only 24. We took this approach further, also looking at implicit rejections, no opinions, and implicit/explicit endorsements.

We took a conservative approach in our ratings. For example, a study which takes it for granted that global warming will continue for the foreseeable future could easily be put into the implicit endorsement category; there is no reason to expect global warming to continue indefinitely unless humans are causing it. However, unless an abstract included (either implicit or explicit) language about the cause of the warming, we categorized it as 'no position'.

Note that John Cook also initiated a spinoff from the project with a survey of climate blog participants re-rating a subset of these same abstracts. However, this spinoff is not a part of our research or conclusions.

The Team
A team of Skeptical Science volunteers proceeded to categorize the 12,000 abstracts – the most comprehensive survey of its kind to date. Each paper was rated independently at least twice, with the identity of the other co-rater not known. A dozen team members completed most of the 24,000+ ratings. There was no funding provided for this project; all the work was performed on a purely voluntary basis.

Once we finished the 24,000+ ratings, we went back and checked the abstracts where there were disagreements. If the disagreement about a given paper couldn't be settled by the two initial raters, a third person acted as the tie-breaker.

The volunteers were an internationally diverse group. Team members' home countries included Australia, USA, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Germany, Finland, and Italy.

The Self-Ratings
As an independent test of the measured consensus, we also emailed over 8,500 authors and asked them to rate their own papers using our same categories. The most appropriate expert to rate the level of endorsement of a published paper is the author of the paper, after all. We received responses from 1,200 scientists who rated a total of over 2,100 papers. Unlike our team's ratings that only considered the summary of each paper presented in the abstract, the scientists considered the entire paper in the self-ratings.

The 97% Consensus Results
Based on our abstract ratings, we found that just over 4,000 papers expressed a position on the cause of global warming, 97.1% of which endorsed human-caused global warming. In the self-ratings, nearly 1,400 papers were rated as taking a position, 97.2% of which endorsed human-caused global warming.

We found that about two-thirds of papers didn't express a position on the subject in the abstract, which confirms that we were conservative in our initial abstract ratings. This result isn't surprising for two reasons: 1) most journals have strict word limits for their abstracts, and 2) frankly, every scientist doing climate research knows humans are causing global warming. There's no longer a need to state something so obvious. For example, would you expect every geological paper to note in its abstract that the Earth is a spherical body that orbits the sun?

This result was also predicted by Oreskes (2007), which noted that scientists

"...generally focus their discussions on questions that are still disputed or unanswered rather than on matters about which everyone agrees"

However, according to the author self-ratings, nearly two-thirds of the papers in our survey do express a position on the subject somewhere in the paper.

We also found that the consensus has strengthened gradually over time. The slow rate reflects that there has been little room to grow, because the consensus on human-caused global warming has generally always been over 90% since 1991. Nevertheless, in both the abstract ratings and self-ratings, we found that the consensus has grown to about 98% as of 2011.

Our results are also consistent with previous research finding a 97% consensus amongst climate experts on the human cause of global warming. Doran and Zimmerman (2009) surveyed Earth scientists, and found that of the 77 scientists responding to their survey who are actively publishing climate science research, 75 (97.4%) agreed that "human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures." Anderegg et al. (2010) compiled a list of 908 researchers with at least 20 peer-reviewed climate publications. They found that:

In our survey, among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus. This is greater than 97% consensus of peer-reviewed papers because endorsement papers had more authors than rejection papers, on average. Thus there is a 97.1% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature, and a 98.4% consensus amongst scientists researching climate change.

Why is this Important?
Several studies have shown that people who correctly perceive the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming are more likely to support government action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. This was most recently shown in McCright et al. (2013), recently published in the journal Climatic Change. People will defer to the judgment of experts, and they trust climate scientists on the subject of global warming.

However, research has also shown that the public is misinformed on the climate consensus. For example, a 2012 poll from US Pew Research Center found less than half of Americans thought that scientists agreed that humans were causing global warming. One contributor to this misperception is false balance in the media, particularly in the US, where most climate stories are "balanced" with a "skeptic" perspective. However, this results in making the 3% seem much larger, like 50%. In trying to achieve "balance", the media has actually created a very unbalanced perception of reality. As a result, people believe scientists are still split about what's causing global warming, and therefore there is not nearly enough public support or motivation to solve the problem.

Such false balance has long been the goal of a dedicated misinformation campaign waged by the fossil fuel industry. Just as one example, in 1991 Western Fuels Association conducted a $510,000 campaign whose primary goal was to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)." These vested interests have exploited the media desire to appear "balanced."

Open Access for Maximum Transparency
We chose to submit our paper to Environmental Research Letters because it is a well-respected, high-impact journal, but also because it offers the option of making a paper available by open access, meaning that for an up-front fee, the paper can be made free for anybody to download. This was important to us, because we want our results to be as accessible and transparent as possible.

To pay the open access fee, in keeping with the citizen science approach, we asked for donations from Skeptical Science readers. We received over 50 donations in less than 10 hours to fully crowd-fund the $1,600 open access cost.

Human-Caused Global Warming
We fully anticipate that some climate contrarians will respond by saying "we don't dispute that humans cause some global warming." First of all, there are a lot of people who do dispute that there is a consensus that humans cause any global warming. Our paper shows that their position is not supported in the scientific literature.

Second, we did look for papers that quantify the human contribution to global warming, and most are not that specific. However, as noted above, if a paper minimized the human contribution, we classified that as a rejection. For example, if a paper were to say "the sun caused most of the global warming over the past century," that would be included in the less than 3% of papers in the rejection categories.

Many studies simply defer to the expert summary of climate science research put together by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which states that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century has been caused by humans. According to recent research, that statement is actually too conservative.

Of the papers that specifically examine the human and natural causes of global warming, virtually all conclude that humans are the dominant cause over the past 50 to 100 years.

Most studies simply accept this fact and go on to examine the consequences of this human-caused global warming and associated climate change.

Another important point is that once you accept that humans are causing global warming, you must also accept that global warming is still happening; humans cause global warming by increasing the greenhouse effect, and our greenhouse gas emissions just keep accelerating. This ties in to our previous posts noting that global warming is accelerating; but that over the past decade, most of that warming has gone into the oceans (including the oft-neglected deep oceans). If you accept that humans are causing global warming, as over 97% of peer-reviewed scientific papers do, then this conclusion should not be at all controversial. With all this evidence for human-caused global warming, it couldn't simply have just stopped, so the heat must be going somewhere. Scientists have found it in the oceans.

Spread the Word
Awareness of the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming is a key factor in peoples' decisions whether or not to support action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is a gap here due to the public's lack of awareness of the consensus. Thus it's critical that we make people aware of these results. To that end, design and advertising firm SJI Associates generously created a website pro-bono, centered around the results of our survey. The website can be viewed at TheConsensusProject.com, and it includes a page where relevant and useful graphics like the one at the top of this post can be shared. You can also follow The Consensus Project on Twitter @ConsensusProj, and on Facebook.

Quite possibly the most important thing to communicate about climate change is that there is a 97% consensus amongst the scientific experts and scientific research that humans are causing global warming. Let's spread the word and close the consensus gap.

Near the moonscape summit of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, an infrared analyser will soon make history. Sometime in the next month, it is expected to record a daily concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of more than 400 parts per million (p.p.m.), a value not reached at this key surveillance point for a few million years.

There will be no balloons or noisemakers to celebrate the event. Researchers who monitor greenhouse gases will regard it more as a disturbing marker of humanity’s power to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere and by extension, the climate of the planet. At 400 p.p.m., nations will have a difficult time keeping global warming in check, says Corinne Le Quéré, a climate researcher at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who says that the impact “is getting very dangerously close to reaching the 2 °C target that governments around the world have pledged not to exceed”.

It will be a while, perhaps a few years, before the global CO2 concentration averaged over an entire year, passes 400 p.p.m.. But topping that value at Mauna Loa is significant because researchers have been monitoring the gas there since 1958, longer than any other spot. “It’s a time to take stock of where we are and where we’re going,” says Ralph Keeling, a geochemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, who oversees that centre’s CO2 monitoring efforts on Mauna Loa. That gas record, known as the Keeling curve, was started by his father, Charles Keeling.

When monitoring started, the CO2 level stood at 316 p.p.m., not much higher than the 280 p.p.m. that characterized conditions before the industrial revolution. But since the Hawaiian measurements began, the values have followed an upward slope that shows no sign of levelling off (see ‘On the rise’). Emissions of other greenhouse gases are also increasing, pushing the total equivalent concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to around 478 p.p.m. in April, according to Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Data compiled by Le Quéré and other members of the Global Carbon Project suggest that humans contributed around 10.4 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere in 2011. About half of that is taken up each year by carbon ‘sinks’ such as the ocean and vegetation on land; the rest remains in the atmosphere and raises the global concentration of CO2.

“The real question now is: how will the sinks behave in the future?” says Gregg Marland, an environmental scientist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, who helps to compile the emissions data.

“At some point the planet can’t keep doing us a favour, particularly the terrestrial biosphere,” says Jim White, a biogeochemist at the University of Colorado Boulder. As the sinks slow down and more emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere, levels will rise even faster.

Some researchers have suggested that the sinks have already started to clog up, reducing their ability to take up more CO2 (J. G. Canadell et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 18866–18870; 2007). Others disagree.

Ashley Ballantyne, a biogeochemist at the University of Montana in Missoula, worked with White and others to examine records of emissions as well as CO2 measurements made around the globe. They found no signs of sinks slowing down (A. P. Ballantyne et al. Nature 488, 70–72; 2012). But it is difficult to be sure, says Inez Fung, a climate modeller at the University of California, Berkeley. “We don’t have adequate observing networks.” The largest global network, operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had to trim 12 stations in 2012 because of budget cuts.

Some of the most crucial areas, such as the tropics, are also the least monitored, although researchers are seeking to fill in the gaps. Scientists from Germany and Brazil are building a 300-metre tower to keep tabs on the Amazon (see Nature 467, 386–387; 2010). And Europe’s Integrated Carbon Observation System is setting up stations throughout the continent and at some marine sites to measure CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Satellites, too, could monitor carbon sources and sinks. Two orbiters are already providing some data, and NASA plans to launch the much anticipated Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 next year (see page 5). An earlier version of that satellite failed during its 2009 launch.

Even as new resources come online, however, researchers are struggling to keep the Mauna Loa station going. “The amount of money that I’m able to obtain for the programme has diminished over time,” says Keeling, whose group monitors CO2 concentration at 13 sites around the world.

“It’s kind of silly that we chose to go all ostrich-like,” says White of the funding difficulties. “We don’t want to know how much CO2 is in the atmosphere, when we ought to be monitoring even more.”

The Arctic seas are being made rapidly more acidic by carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new report.

Scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) monitored widespread changes in ocean chemistry in the region.

They say even if CO2 emissions stopped now, it would take tens of thousands of years for Arctic Ocean chemistry to revert to pre-industrial levels.

Many creatures, including commercially valuable fish, could be affected.

They forecast major changes in the marine ecosystem, but say there is huge uncertainty over what those changes will be.

It is well known that CO2 warms the planet, but less well-known that it also makes the alkaline seas more acidic when it is absorbed from the air.

Absorption is particularly fast in cold water so the Arctic is especially susceptible, and the recent decreases in summer sea ice have exposed more sea surface to atmospheric CO2.

The Arctic's vulnerability is exacerbated by increasing flows of freshwater from rivers and melting land ice, as freshwater is less effective at chemically neutralising the acidifying effects of CO2.

The researchers say the Nordic Seas are acidifying over a wide range of depths - most quickly in surface waters and more slowly in deep waters.

The report’s chairman, Richard Bellerby from the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, told BBC News that they had mapped a mosaic of different levels of pH across the region, with the scale of change largely determined by the local intake of freshwater.

“Large rivers flow into the Arctic, which has an enormous catchment for its size,” he said.

“There’s slow mixing so in effect we get a sort of freshwater lens on the top of the sea in some places, and freshwater lowers the concentration of ions that buffers pH change. The sea ice has been a lid on the Arctic, so the loss of ice is allowing fast uptake of CO2.”

This is being made worse, he said, by organic carbon running off the land – a secondary effect of regional warming.

“Continued rapid change is a certainty,” he said.

“We have already passed critical thresholds. Even if we stop emissions now, acidification will last tens of thousands of years. It is a very big experiment.”

The research team monitored decreases in seawater pH of about 0.02 per decade since the late 1960s in the Iceland and Barents seas.

Chemical effects related to acidification have also been encountered in surface waters of the Bering Strait and the Canada Basin of the central Arctic Ocean.

Scientists estimate that the average acidity of surface ocean waters worldwide is now about 30% higher than before the Industrial Revolution.

The researchers say there is likely to be major change to the Arctic marine ecosystem as a result. Some key prey species like sea butterflies may be harmed. Other species may thrive. Adult fish look likely to be fairly resilient but the development of fish eggs might be harmed. It is too soon to tell.

Let's cut to the chase and break this down REAL easy for you... when you get a research grant and your findings conclude that there is no issue to investigate further, you don't get another grant to continue to find nothing.

Man made global warming has already been disproven over & over. But if you ever walked outside of your mom's basement, you'd already know this.

Let's cut to the chase and break this down REAL easy for you... when you get a research grant and your findings conclude that there is no issue to investigate further, you don't get another grant to continue to find nothing.

Man made global warming has already been disproven over & over. But if you ever walked outside of your mom's basement, you'd already know this.

__________________
"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father ... And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

"If the people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson

Let's cut to the chase and break this down REAL easy for you... when you get a research grant and your findings conclude that there is no issue to investigate further, you don't get another grant to continue to find nothing.

Man made global warming has already been disproven over & over. But if you ever walked outside of your mom's basement, you'd already know this.

Yes. Actually, I will believe anything. No matter how strange or crazy it sounds. As long as there is sufficient peer-reviewed evidence to support it. As long as the idea is able to be proven to satisfaction, I'll believe it.

But I laugh heartily at your notion of how science grants work. It shows how completely ignorant you are on the subject. Research grants are not given in perpetuation regardless of proof or disproof. The idea that the entire scientific community would fake the results just to keep funding is the dumbest thing I've heard this week. And it's been a dumb week, so congrats.

Would you care to offer up some of the examples of man made global warming being disproven over and over? Contribute some of these and let's talk about them.

But I laugh heartily at your notion of how science grants work. It shows how completely ignorant you are on the subject. Research grants are not given in perpetuation regardless of proof or disproof.

Spoken like a person who knows not what they are talking about. Step into the field sometime and see how the real world works, buddy.

As for your diatribes, did you even read them ( we know the answer... )?!

The first is no 'peer review' in the commonly accepted sense - all they did was review the findings for affirmations, conclusions, etc - NOT the data or methods used! The second makes a completely unsubstantiated claim that the concentration of C02 at that point in Hawaii will reach levels is has not in, quote, "millions of years"... The last makes just as ridiculous claims that we've basically already killed our oceans pH balance...

New '97% Consensus' study goes belly up: 'This study done by John Cook and others, praised by the President of the U.S., found more scientific publications whose abstracts reject global warming (78) than say humans are primarily to blame for it' (65)